Column - Greg Sagan: NYC mosque could deter violence

Before computer monitors got warm this had turned into a frightful clash between those (damned "liberals") who wanted to suck up to the Muslim world by defiling hallowed ground with a symbol of the very people who attacked us, and us (Christian patriots) who want to honor the memories of the 3,000 who died so undeservedly, so horribly and so randomly on 9/11, and not with a mosque, either.

It would help us all to put this question in some kind of local context in order to really understand the elegant problem the issue creates, and anytime you think of a local context relevant to Manhattan you really should accept that you are no longer in the Panhandle of Texas. Everyone here knows that Manhattan isn't Amarillo, but we don't often quite understand just what Manhattan is.

Manhattan is the densest swirl of disparate cultures anywhere on the planet. This cultural swirl is marked by the significant feature that no matter how long, how fast, or how closely any two cultural swirls might approach each other, they never lose their original identities. That's why, even today, some things in Manhattan are still "Chinese food."

In Manhattan a neighborhood can be a building, even just a floor of a building. The streets you must not cross without risking your safety are as impassable and as final as minefields. They are the practical borders of your world. Cross country adventure is a subway ride. Nature is Central Park and the Museum of Natural History. Their fire trucks have steerable rear wheels.

It's an alien world, I'm tellin' ya.

In Manhattan there are Catholics, Protestants, Jews and everybody else. In Manhattan "everybody else" includes at least one practitioner of every religion, cult, spinoff, lifestyle, ethical blend and color deity it is in the hearts of man to seek, and where you find an ardent defender you can always find a willing acolyte. So Manhattan doesn't enjoy our sophisticated distinctions between Church of Christ and Baptist adherents. In Manhattan your status was confirmed the moment you admitted you were (a) a Christian and (b) not a Catholic.

In Manhattan, it is quite easy to find non-Muslims who have no problem with a mosque two blocks from the 9/11 site. It is also quite easy to find many who do.

The arguments I've seen for and against the construction of this Islamic community center seem to run something like this. For it are those who cling to the principal of religious tolerance and the promise of America to treat all religions, and even no religion at all, as equal before the law no matter what. Against it are those who believe it shows bad taste and an insensitivity to the pain of those who lost friends and relatives in 9/11.

I have a definite problem with the arguments, and the media attempts to stoke those arguments, that appeal to our mistrust of Islam as an "alien philosophy bent on the destruction of America." The man behind this community center, Imam Reisal Abdul Rauf, appears to have a long history of promoting interfaith tolerance and respect, and given the fact that some of the people who lost their lives to Islamic terrorists on 9/11 were themselves Muslim, it is hardly an unseemly gesture per se for anyone to want to build a mosque in the vicinity of the spot where the blow fell.

To do otherwise is to miss a golden opportunity. The clamor of opposition to this center feeds on an anti-Islamic sentiment in this country that the political institutions and the institution of the press have turned from the damp moss of religious bigotry into the highly flammable tinder of religious zealotry. It is no such thing, and we should resent and suspect the intentions of anyone who would have us believe otherwise.

Islam had no more to do with 9/11 than Judeo-Christianity had to do with nuking Japan. Were most of the scientists and politicians who worked on the Manhattan Project either Jews or Christians? Yes. Is Japan primarily a Buddhist country? Yes. Was our decision based on the religious convictions of our respective sides? Uh, no. If we asked to build a Christian church in downtown Hiroshima a couple of blocks from ground zero, would that necessarily translate into a gesture of scorn toward the Japanese people? I rather doubt it.

I suppose it is intriguing to some to visualize this new community center as a navigation beacon for the next wave of airliner attacks.